Inside Out
by Sarvihaara
Summary: It takes one touch to unleash the madening voices of confusion. (mild slash)


A/N: If this is confusing it's meant to be, because these are Ron's thoughts and he is confused. Does that make sense? This is m/m slash, if you don't like that, don't read. Constructive critisism is good, flaming is pathetic.

**  
Inside Out**

  
[somewhere far away from here / I feel fine enough, I guess / considering everything's a mess.]

  
Maybe I am going mad. It's not that hard to believe, I guess, since only this morning I was informed that madness runs in the family. A great Aunt locked away in a padded chamber, the grandfather I never knew losing his mind. I grin wildly, ironically. My eyelid flickers. The voices continue to babble but the surrounding air is silent.

Clenched hair in tight fists. I rock on my bed. Skin to skin, torso against torso, soft stubble under my fingertips. My mind, that had disappeared for a few seconds, returns, and demands to know what I had been up to while it was away. These thoughts; I don't know where they are coming from. I don't want to know, want to ignore, forget, wipe clean the slate of my mind. Words and feelings tainting the conscious I had thought familiar for all my sixteen years. Now this landscape of my imagination is littered, foreign beasts run wild on the plains, bright purple and orange against the green sky. I always wanted to be normal, and I was in my mind, if not in my life of mischief and adventure. But now... I'm doubting, yet praying all the same, that I am. I never could lie to myself, and right now is no exception.

This stranger, with a whole crowd behind them, has taken over my sanity. Talking to me, making me feel, making my fingers want to reach out and graze ever so slightly on his skin. How do I force my hand to stay by my side when my will is held captive and I hold no control over my actions? I see his eyes, shimmering a unique spiral of green and gold around dilated pupils. I'd always thought they were the one shade, not a forest of colours, flickering through shadows and rays of brightness, but had never been close enough, never looked hard enough, to tell any different. They shine from behind my hands, hands that rub my own eyes and cover my insides with darkness.

God, where are these feelings coming from, feelings for my best friend? This stranger, forcing me to cooperate, telling me what's right and wrong. What happened to the grey? The grey that covers everything in dullness and truth. No blinding bright white, no midnight black to drown in. No surprises. 

SHUT UP! The voices babbling, new tenants of my head. I hear you but it doesn't mean I understand. And I know it's not wrong, these vibrations rippling through me, but wrong for me. Why though, am I any different? I don't stand alone on matters of principle, and what about matters of the heart? My heart? Surely I have a say. The voices, incoherent but strong, continue on without giving a response.

My eyes sting and I react by rubbing more. One knee rises to my chest and a robed arm wraps around. I replay again what awoke this chatter within and set my insides in motion. My head falls and a sweaty forehead rests on my knee.

A few hours previous....

_Full body contact, the first of its kind. The voices scream, disturbed from their dormant state within the folds of my brain. The first time I'd touched him, like this, pressed between his chest and the frozen ground. I will my hand back, fingers outstretched to experience his exposed flesh, pale against his dark coat and raven hair. But like slow motion he's pulling away, straightening to stand, apologising for knocking me to the ground. I lay there, one arm stretched out sideways, dazed and slightly winded, until he hauls me up, grasping my outstretched hand. Letting go as if nothing has changed when I stand upright at his side._

_Oh, but my head._

_A pounding; a beating received from an invisible force throwing punch after punch. A hurricane of words swirl and collide, set free from some unknown source. I want to cry out, to silence them, but am aware of the outside, beyond my skull, of people who'd indulge in witnessing a crazy lanky form screaming at nothing they can sense or see. Their heads would turn, stare, share laughable glances at their companions... No, I can be in control._

_He's chattering beside me, unaware of the distress washing colour from my face, and we resume skating across the ice. Years of this; companionship, side by side, common ground; overturned suddenly with a rough touch of pressure, torso against torso. I instantly feel separated, alone. No longer seeing what he sees, thinking what he thinks, acting just like we used to, together for all those years. As we skate I notice his slight movements, am aware of muscles working beside me, arms swinging back and forth as he glides across the glassy surface. Movements I wasn't conscious of before, or perhaps was, and it's only now that they matter._

I swirl back from the hours before. Once again stranded in the sixth year dorm, afraid to step out of my hiding place. Because if I lose it, lose my grasp on the panic attack that threatens to rise from my stomach and up through my throat, I want to slip here, alone; no judgement, no stares, no questions.

So sure of how I felt before; no question, no doubt. And I've changed so suddenly inside? How can this be? Sixteen years of nothing like this, no glances in that direction, no thoughts of bodies like my own. Pure, physical emotion lust for long hair, full breasts and short skirts. In one moment it's all left behind and I'm seeing everything new, an altered perspective. The other half of the world, the men, the guys, in jeans and shorts and lose shirts that hang off flat chests and broad shoulders. Robes falling free of curves. And that's why it feels so wrong. It's new, completely new. No gradual awareness, no easing into anything. A sudden shock to the system and loss of control that I'm whirling from, under attack by the stranger taking over my being. Me, fighting; unsuccessful attempts of recovery. And now, trying to find myself after the drawn out moments of being so lost. The heels of my hands rub again at my chocolate eyes.

I guess I'm not going mad. It's starting to sink in now, smooth out the sharp daggers of insanity. A smooth surface of teenage confusion, focused now on the fear and importance of staying afloat at this moment. The possiblility of sinking to stormier depths in time, contemplation for another day.

I guess I'm not going mad. It's starting to sink in now, smooth out the sharp daggers of insanity. A peaceful surface of teenage confusion, focused now on the fear and importance of staying afloat at this moment. The possiblility of sinking to stormier depths in time, contemplation for another day.

Right now I want him so badly it hurts; aching, throbbing, burning. Sharp biting awareness through my body, awakening, remembering his weight pinning me down. Maybe these thoughts aren't new. They've just been hidden so well for so long, tucked away in some dark recess of my mind, making up shadows that I fear to explore. Never believing them before, never venturing past the temporary boundaries of my being, never testing to see how far I could actually reach. And with no belief comes no existence. I had been satisfied with that theory, until now.

Push him roughly; hit the wall, pressed lips on lips, hardness pushing through. Moaning. My normal voice reverberating strangely, detached from my body, as if from miles away. But it fades. These thoughts, these new overriding fantasies of the guy who's been beside me all these years, they can't breath life. Reality kicks in and the blow crushes my stomach. He'll keep the usual space when now I want him pressed so hard against me that my lungs feel like bursting for air.

Knocking pounds through my already splitting headache from behind the closed door. I stop any movement but utter no sound, and await the intruder. The squeak of a rusting hinge as the door swings, clicking heels on the floorboards.

"Ron?" The soft, familiar voice. My girlfriend, my other best friend. I know that her eyes are glistening with concern, her fingers pushing unruly hair behind her ear as a nervous habit. "Ron, are you alright?"

My hands slowly lower with a strange sense of foreboding; my shield blocking the outside disappearing to leave me young, weak and vulnerable. I look up through red rimmed glassy eyes, suddenly aware that she could see straight through them and read the grammar of my fears. But with the confused concern she projects my way, I rationalise that these incoherent feelings are confined in my head, for me to survive alone. 

Her arm reaches out and once burning fingers brush my forehead comfortingly, pushing strands of flaming hair aside. Her contact holds a strange nothingness, though I'm sure she's trying hard to remove delicate shards of my unknown pain. It's me that's unresponsive, I no longer want her. As simple as that one light flickers off and another is switched on, and from the past strugglings and madness of today I pull back, out of her reach, with a blank eerie calm of acceptance.

  
~Sarvi 10/1/01.

  
Disclaimer: I do not own Ron or any of JK Rowling's characters. She is the genius.  
Lyric credit to Barenaked Ladies, 'Pinch Me'.

Reviews appreciated, I'd love to know what you think!


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